Traditional power system planning approaches are built around the reliability and flexibility offered by traditional fossil resources. These approaches are inadequate in their ability to model high renewables integration into the grid. New tools are under development that can account for the inherent unpredictability and distributed nature of renewable resources. The key requirements for power planning models include the ability to provide adequate temporal, spatial, and operational resolution, ability to manage the necessary computational complexity, transparency and replicability.

We recently released a report that evaluates the costs, benefits, and requirements associated with achieving California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) targets using the Resolve model. Resolve is an investment and operations planning model aimed at addressing key planning challenges, investment needs, and emission reduction related to high renewables integration. Ongoing research activities include evaluation of mid to long-term energy storage needs of the electric grid for select fleet electrification scenarios. Fleet electrification places new demands on the electric grid, which are further complicated by increasing renewables integration into the grid as mandated by the RPS.

Research activities also include life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA) of energy conversion systems and pathways. Recent projects include Life Cycle Assessment and economic analysis of gasification based renewable fuels and power production and an analysis of renewable hydrogen production pathways anticipated to be available in the short, mid and long term timeframes. The conversion technologies evaluated for hydrogen production included thermal processes, electrolytic processes, photolytic processes, and biochemical processes.